Advertising options

[ajpiper2k]

I like the idea of being able build these types of businesses. A publishing company could use paper and dye stuff to produce different types of magazines (i.e. news, sports, etc.) and possibly books. A purchasing unit can set a budget for new content for each issue. The publisher can generate two types of revenue streams. First is the sale of the publication, the second is advertising revenue. These products could be sold at a news stand or a book store. Then, you can have your businesses all advertise in your magazines and newspapers.

I think this would fit pretty closely to the existing model.

I like the idea of internet advertising, but I'm not sure if you could practically implement it in an add-on. In my mind, if you are going to have internet sites, then you also have to be able to sell your products through an internet web site. This has several challenges. For example, shipping web orders internationally is generally cost prohibitive. So, you couldn't offer a product to a specific city unless you either sold or produced that product in the local city. I don't know if you are prepared to take that step in an add-on or if this is something that should wait for Cap3.

Andy

[ajpiper2k]

I think the idea of the corporate office needs to be expanded. I've already stated that I'm not a big fan of paying for bunch of high priced executives that just want more and more money for mediocre results. But I like the idea of centralizing certain administrative functions for a company. Advertising, payroll, IT services, customer service center, technical support are all different types of services a company has to provide.

I think this is an opportunity for regional administrative buildings. The larger your staff, the more payroll squares you will require. Each product should have an overall advertising budget. But, I don't think you need an advertising square in each store. This would typically be done in a central office for all the stores. Now, the more products you sell, the larger the amount of advertising you would require. Similarly, some products (like computers) require more technical support. The lower the quality of the product, the more technical support calls you have. In turn, the better trained your technical support staff is, the better your customer satisfaction with the product.

All I ask is please don't make me hire an executive to manage these departments.

I posted this in the players suggestions since it covers a bit more than advertising. I just wanted to make sure you saw it.

Andy

[Webby64286]

I'm going to make the assumption that the AI gets fixed and I won't be able to control every end product from mine to store like I do now. Obviously, it's going to depend on my brand strategy on how I would handle marketing, but I think you should be able to, if not required to, do more than one at a time. Here's what I'd like to see: Corporate Brand is mainly to help stock performance in the way of investor relations and to help in company perception as far as corporate citizenship (a good place to work and thus happy employees and happy customers). This would be done through annual spending at the HQ level. This is how most multinational conglomerations use their corporate brand. Range Brand: You could have a slide bar like you do now in the factory and in the retail store and OUTSIDE of the 3x3 layout. You choose the amount to spend each month or quarter on marketing and that money gets allocated among different marketing channels; where you decide what percentages each channel gets. This is how consumer product companies market. These channels can include TV, Radio, newspaper, online, (general online not specific like Search Engine Optimization or banner ads etc.) direct mail, (this channel is slowly dying but maybe you make it so cheap that it's a viable alternative when you're just starting out) catalog mailing (again a dying channel but I'm just typing ideas, maybe there is a way to make this work). The idea of corporate sponshorship is interesting but in terms of multinational corporations they don't support the local kids sports team, that's more of a mom and pop store type of thing (at least where I'm from). They do however sponsor things of a more philanthropic nature so it's not a bad idea especially if you were to add another category like company image or public perception of your company. If you wanted to take marketing a step further, your marketing would drive so many visitors to your store where you could see how many per month visited your store (to see how effective your marketing strategy is) and your store training level determines what percentage of those visitors buy from the store. Unique Brand is kind of tough. I'll take a company like Proctor & Gamble who make a ton of consumer products, brand each one very well but don't have any of their own retail stores. They unique brand from their HQ because they depend on everyone else to sell their products. Where that branding pays off for P&G is they get more shelf space in the supermarket for their products, don't know how that could work here. From a realism perspective, and this goes to how I would allocate my marketing budget, I would do away with the ability to buy any media firms it's totally unrealistic. While I'm thinking about it, and I touched on this in another post, I'd like to see more of a particular retail needed in each city. As it stands now all I need to have 100% market share in any product line is to sell it in two stores. For instance in a city of 2 million I can open two apparel stores and sell 200,000 jeans, 100,000 sweaters and 70,000 leather jackets PER MONTH! I should have to have at least 6 stores to move that total amount of product (by the way, at that rate, every man woman and child is going through 1 pair of jeans per year, what in God's name are they doing?) Yes it would kill profits at the store level, but that's the wonderful world of retail. If you are going to make this piece a fuller or richer part of the game, there must be some way to measure return on investment other than an increase in an overall number. Ask any marketing director what's the one question they get more from top brass and it's to prove where their marketing is working and where they need to improve.